PLAYED FOR YOU

Im Tal der Drachen

Magic wands as means of transport

A family of dragons lives hidden in Dragon Valley, only some magicians are aware of this. When the dragon babies visit the magician’s apprentices to play Fireball, Mage Razandar is annoyed and you need to get the little dragons back to their valley quickly.

Dragon Valley is set up in the game box, next to it a path with Mage Razandar at one end and his Tower at the far end.

You roll the action die: Either the Mage goes nearer to the tower or moves away from it or you can save a dragon baby. To do so you pull one from the bag and place it on the tower. Players holding this baby’s color cards lift the baby with their wands and carry it into the valley. For the symbol of dragon+lava you must transport the dragon and lava stone pieces together. When the action is successful the dragon baby is saved and the color cards go out of the game. If not, you put the baby back into the back and the black Razandar die decides how far the Mage advances towards his tower. When all dragon babies are back in the Dragon Valley before the Mage reaches his tower, all players have won the game together.

A variant uses magic cards that indicate how the magic wands must be used, for instance with the “wrong” hand or with your eyes closed.

Im Tal der Drachen is in principle a beautiful game, but an absolute challenging game which has been equipped with thicker sticks by the publisher lately, a game in which players need to cooperate and communicate intensely, but which is lost all the same quite often. House rules for the black die enhance the chances for winning the game dramatically and thus also the fun in playing this basically very nice game.

Players: 2-4

Age: 6+

Time: 20+

Designer: Johannes Berger, Julien Gupta

Artist: Daniel Döbner

Price: ca. 20 Euro

Publisher: Queen Games 2014

Web: www.queen-games.de

Genre: Dexterity 

Users: For children

Version: de

Rules: de en

In-game text:  no

Comments:

Basically good game idea

Cooperation and coordination are deciding elements

House rules can raise success rates drastically

Compares to:

Packen Wir’s, Chop Suey and other dexterity games

Other editions:

Dragon Valley, Queen Games USA

Chance (pink): 2

Tactic (turquoise): 0

Strategy (blue): 0

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 0

Communication (red): 0

Interaction (brown): 2

Dexterity (green): 3

Action (dark green): 3